Sunday, June 25, 2017

Changes Proposed to Keep Cars King of Golden Gate Park

Anyone who goes into Golden Gate Park by foot or bike, immediately knows they don’t belong there. Last year a bicyclist even died in the park, and that’s why the SFMTA is ready to protect our most cherished San Franciscans - cars. So the mayor asked the SFMTA to devise a plan that does the bare minimum and keep cars driving and parking everywhere for free. The project’s goals can be found here.

SFMTA makes note of a person dying in Golden Gate Park as a reason why they’re willing to make tepid car-friendly changes to the park.

The SFMTA used index cards to collect all the potential ideas for Golden Gate Park improvements. Ideas included:

Remove free on-street parking

Manage and charge for parking

Install bike lanes on all park streets

Divert all through traffic to the 2 ARTERIAL roads surrounding the park

Limit speed to 15 mph

Triple traffic fines within the park

Once all the ideas were collected, they were thrown into a dumpster and set on fire.

The SFMTA then came up with “solutions” that wouldn’t impact motorists in the slightest, honored suburban style street design, and treated bicyclists and pedestrians like second class citizens.

The SFMTA proposes adding a smattering of paint, some signs, and maybe even a few raised crosswalks and blinking lights in a grand show of safety theater. Fortunately none of the proposed changes will do anything to reduce the amount of people driving and parking for free in the park.

If you want to thank the SFMTA, Mayor Ed Lee and Ed Reiskin for all their hard work keeping cars everywhere in the park, you can thank them by filling out their survey here.

We heard you don’t want cars in the park, but we’re putting cars in the park, because of cars.